


The Perfect Metaphor: The Final Problem and the End of Sherlock

by PlaidAdder



Series: Sherlock Meta [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 19:40:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10043069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: I think that I may fairly make two postulata:1) Whatever about series 5, this episode was designed to be the last episode of Sherlock that Moffat and Gatiss would make.2) It should be.





	

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I think that I may fairly make two postulata:

1) Whatever about series 5, this episode was designed to be the last episode of _Sherlock_ that Moffat and Gatiss would make.

2) It should be.

Not necessarily because it was awful. I’m going to talk about some of the infuriating things about it in a minute, but it was more interesting than, say, “Scandal in Belgravia” is for much of its running time (why am I outdoors watching Sherlock and Irene Adler talk about boomerangs again?), and more coherent (in its way) than “The Sign of Three,” and more compelling than the first 80 minutes of “The Great Game,” an episode with which it obviously has much in common. And I do appreciate all the canon references–”The Musgrave Ritual,” “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” etc.–and we do get to spend a lot of time with John, Mycroft, and Sherlock, and most of that time is interesting.

No, I say this should be the final episode of _Sherlock_ because this show has run its course. Moffat and Gatiss have emptied out their joint idea bank account. For all the new excitingness that was supposed to come with the SECRET SISTER! twist, this episode is more obviously derivative, not just of other episodes of Sherlock but of _Doctor Who, Silence of the Lambs, Star Trek_ , and no doubt many other genre shows with which I am not familiar, not to mention (as I believe Violethuntress may have already pointed out) _Jane Eyre._ I imagine that Moffat and Gatiss believed that they were achieving new heights of feminism by making the Holmes sister the smartest of the bunch. In fact, all they’re doing is catching up to where feminist criticism was in 1979, when Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert published _The Madwoman in the Attic_. 

So. First of all, let’s dispense with the idea that this plot makes any kind of literal sense. If you think about how this would happen under real world conditions, or even under the ‘rules’ established within this episode itself, it falls apart IMMEDIATELY.

Don’t believe me? OK, how’s this: the first big twist in this episode turns on the fact that Eurus overtakes the minds and souls of every person she talks to for even a few minutes. That’s how she gets control of the asylum. Sherlock and Mycroft are of course exceptional. But any other person, no matter how much they are forewarned about Eurus, is overtaken by her after even a few minutes of conversation.

John is the one who deduces that this has happened with the prison governor. John, like Sherlock and Mycroft, appears to the end to be basically immune to her manipulations.

Okay. Let’s remember that Eurus spent several weeks posing as John’s THERAPIST. Which means that during each of those weeks he spent 50 minutes straight talking to her, with no idea who she really was, and in a setting where he was deliberately trying to make himself open and vulnerable.

And yet, he remains unaffected.

Why is he unaffected? There is no realistic explanation. It makes no sense logically or literally. But metaphorically, it makes perfect sense. He’s not affected by Eurus because Eurus isn’t part of him.

Moffat and Gatiss, I am guessing, are aware of the fact that Eurus is not actually a character. She and Sherlock are two halves of a split subject, and the narrative of “Final Problem”–indeed the arc of the four seasons–has been about healing the split. Eurus–like, oh my God, SO MANY male-created female characters–embodies two irreconcilable nightmares that Sherlock’s always had about who he is: the cold-blooded psychopath to whom everything human is just an increasingly cruel game, and the emotional basket case whose feelings are so intense and ungovernable that they threaten to destroy him. Throughout the episode, Eurus shuttles back and forth between these two metaphors–the little girl overwhelmed by emotion, and the adult woman driven by an unnaturally detached curiosity about how human beings work. The Final Problem of the title is not the string of dilemmas and puzzles and Sophie’s Choices that Eurus engineers for them at Sherrinford (I told you they would tell us whatever bullshit they’d made up about Sherrinford in the next episode) but the problem of how to survive his encounter with the psychopathic woman long enough to make contact with and eventually save the terrified little girl. 

As an allegory for therapy, I find this metaphor mildly interesting. As Gothic horror, I find it only intermittently effective. As a casefic…well, it’s not a casefic; the only actual case in it turns out to have been a metaphor hallucinated by a madwoman. As an exploration of Sherlock’s subjectivity via Freudian/Jungian/Lacanian symbolism, I find it inferior to “The Abominable Bride.” And as an episode of _Sherlock_ , it’s…well, it is what it is. It is after all their show, and…

No. You know what, no. There are certain things about this episode that, to me, range from annoying to repugnant and I will tell you what they are, in order of offensiveness.

**ANNOYING: So derivative. So very derivative.**

Of Moffat and Gatiss, first of all. “Hell Bent” is the Cadillac, or should I say the Aston-Martin, of late model Moffat _Doctor Who;_  I guess Moffat liked it so much he did it twice. Man imprisoned in tower/torture chamber by his sadistic kin, haunted by demons, confronts them with the help of a female presence which never fully materializes but is constantly haunting him, wins through in the end. And of course what Eurus does to the trio, or what she claims to be doing to them, is an even sicker version of what Moriarty engineers in “The Great Game,” in which Sherlock is constantly pushed to solve ever more complex puzzles under ever shorter deadlines under the threat that if he fails a hostage will be executed. Eurus, of course, turns out to be the bigger and better psycho (note that we are informed early that Eurus manifests two of the telltale signs that your child is a psycho: torturing animals and setting fires) and as such is constantly changing the rules in ways that make it impossible for the boys to win (and makes one wonder why it takes them so long to realize they have to stop playing; whatever about the girl on the plane, they obviously don’t have as much control over the situation as they think they do and they should have accepted that at the outset, but I’m getting back to that in a minute). 

But there are two original series _Star Trek_ episodes set in asylums where the lunatics have taken over (”Dagger of the Mind” and “Whom Gods Destroy”). Much of what goes on in Sherrinford derives its impact from our memories of _Silence of the Lambs_ (though at least there we can give them credit for deliberately manipulating our expectations in order to keep us from realizing there wasn’t really any glass. John in the well with the water rising is an old drama-generating tactic that they could have borrowed from anything from “The Pit and the Pendulum” to _Star Wars: A New Hope_. It’s been kind of fun playing spot the borrowing all these years; but I’m ready to be done with the game now.

**VERY ANNOYING: Mary’s final voiceover.**

Oh my GOD. Do I NEED to be lectured by Mary fucking Morstan about how all that matters is the “legend?” Does she HAVE to be the one giving me the “Valhalla of the Mind” speech? And am I just supposed to not point out that “two men in a flat in Baker Street solving crimes” is precisely what this show initially promised us and then, after the end of Series 2, never, EVER gave us?

**SUPER ANNOYING: Wow, women are some scary shit, aren’t they? Especially smart women! Make a woman too brainy and she goes INSAAAAAANE!!!**

Do I have to explain how deeply, deeply conventional this episode is being by externalizing all of the Holmes brothers’ most dangerous and least sympathetic characteristics in a female character? Who’s not only insane, but spends most of the episode dressed like Ophelia? And who, when she’s finally incorporated into the male subject, still has to be under lock and key and without language and expressing herself only through the semiotic (viz., the violin), something which would make Julia Kristeva proud but which just makes me tired?

**REALLY MOST ANNOYING: The Three Garridebs.**

YOU KNOW everyone in the fandom has been waiting for the Garridebs reference FOR YEARS. And you give us three strangers dangling from ropes outside a window. You. Bollocks.

**DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO REPUGNANT: Torturing Molly Hooper.**

I know the Johnlockers probably spent this entire sequence on the floor rolling around and screaming. But honestly I would think the Sherlolly people would be in agony too. I mean it’s nice they gave her a scene but for Christ’s sake.

**CROSSING THE BORDER: Oh, look, now that we have a female Sherlock, she can finally make out with Moriarty!**

And even then there’s glass.

**FULL-ON REPUGNANT: The “moral dilemma” conceit.**

I hate the whole Eurus-tortures-her-experimental-subjects sequence for several reasons, and I could be here all day so I’ll just do a list.

1) This is just an excuse to torture the main characters. I understand why people find this riveting and maybe it’s just that I’m old, but if I wanted to watch people being tortured this way there’s several seasons of _24_ that I could cue up on Netflix.

2) The basic dishonesty of the whole premise is never called out. Eurus keeps talking about this as a test of the humans’ “moral code” (this fits with everything we see her saying in the tapes of her interviews with the prison governor). John, Sherlock, and Mycroft are constantly being forced to choose between morally unacceptable options, the object being to prove that no attempt at living an ethical life can survive the right amount of duress. But all of that is a lie, because ALL of the moral responsibility for all of these deaths rests with Eurus, who’s the one who controls the situation and does all the actual killing. Someone in that room should have been smart enough to figure that out from the start and refuse to play, just as Sherlock EVENTUALLY does.

3) How noble they all are, as they refuse to do murder. Almost makes you forget Sherlock’s already a murderer because Steven Moffat already made him one. And Mary’s a murderer, for hire even, and she’s now apparently the good fairy of the Sherlock universe. She’d have blown the governor’s head off, no problem. She’s killed people just as undeserving of it on far less provocation. But she’s dead now, so everyone loves her. STOP talking about ETHICS, Moffat, you have WAIVED THAT RIGHT.

**ANTICLIMACTICALLY JUST ANNOYING AGAIN: Baby? What baby?**

So, in conclusion:

There’s some good character stuff in this episode and some of it’s quite moving. As much as I hate the Eurus plot, I did find Sherlock’s finally finding her in their old house, and his duet with her in the asylum, affecting; but more for his sake than for anyone else’s. And again, with all the objections above, I thought the most compelling acting done in this episode was during the shooting-the-governor scene, especially the way John tries to prepare him for his execution. I loved the running gag about Lady Bracknell, though I was never for a moment fooled by Mycroft’s “shoot John” speech. And what curmudgeon could turn down the final montage of the two of them bringing up Rosie at 221B as they fight crime into the future, even if one does have to wonder how the fuck they’re incorporating parenting into this lifestyle.

Overall, though, this is the end of the line. It really is. This was a promising concept given what was initially an electrifying treatment which became increasingly melodramatic and, from an emotional standpoint, crude as time went on. Please just leave it where it is, BBC. It’s never going to get any better, and we can sort of say it went out with some dignity. The Holmes family is happy again, John and Sherlock are happy again, Rosie’s apparently got excellent childcare, Molly I suppose is over it after Sherlock explained it to her, and Sherlock has finally completed the journey Lestrade identified for us at the beginning of it all and become a Good Man. Harry, of course, is still locked up in the attic. Well, leave her there too. The rest of us will take care of her. 

Leave it where it is, everyone. Learn from Doyle’s mistakes. Let this be the final problem. From here, this show isn’t going anywhere that’s good.





End file.
